


a road without a goal

by roadtripexpert



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Corporate Malpractice, Found Family, Gen, Memory Loss, Morally Grey Characters, Motels, Nonlinear Narrative, Russia, Same Goddard different jobs, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:54:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23482006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roadtripexpert/pseuds/roadtripexpert
Summary: Doug Eiffel sits on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere Russia and wonders how he got there.
Relationships: Doug Eiffel & Renée Minkowski
Kudos: 20





	a road without a goal

**Author's Note:**

> “So many memories and so little worth remembering, and in front of me — a long, long road without a goal...” - Ivan Turgenev (Fathers and Sons)

MEDIA RES

Doug Eiffel sits on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere Russia and wonders how he got there. 

The funny thing about Doug Eiffel—the thing that he will introduce to people as funny at work parties—is that he cannot remember how he came to be in Russia. He cannot remember his past life. _Hey guys, I must have gotten some really fucked up brain trauma or something, look at me go, I’m not even Russian, I don’t know how I even got here! Did I fly? Did I just appear? Did I exist at all before? Who knows!_

People do not think it’s funny. They either think he’s lying, or he’s crazy. A bit of both. He doesn’t go to many work parties anymore. 

Sometimes Renée will invite him over to her tiny apartment in one of the old soviet buildings and they’ll get phenomenally drunk and never talk about it. He remembers her cat is named Frank and she has a picture of her husband who does not live with her and whom Doug is much too afraid to ask about. 

Selberg is not invited to their gatherings. And he never shows up to work parties. Doug thinks of him as a ghost, or a mad scientist, although he is neither. 

Doug sits, the gravel digging into the sturdy denim of his all-American jeans, one of the remnants from his erased past. The van is askew a few feet away, smoking. Doug has his hands above his head, just as Selberg told him to. He looks over at Renée who is looking stonily at the ground, the cracked asphalt, weeds poking their heads up into the grey of a sunless Russian May. 

Doug looks up at the smooth sky, at a flock of birds tearing their way through the upper air, and the moon, visible in its ghostly form. There is an endless roaring in his ears. 

Renée was negotiating in Russian, but she is done now, Doug can see that at least. She is done. And Selberg has a gun. 

EVENT HORIZON

Doug stares hard through the filmy window of their new “mobile van transport tour”. That’s what Svetlana from HR told him to call it anyway, he has a feeling something was lost in translation, but she looked so pleased with her broken English, that he adopted it immediately for her sake. 

Now Renée rolls her eyes whenever he painstakingly calls it that. But she’s started shortening it to MV double-T. 

“Welcome to the MV double-T,” she says semi-ironically to their clients, craning her head to make (in Doug’s opinion) uncomfortable eye contact with whatever tourist(s) they have in the back seat. 

That leaves Doug to explain awkwardly what that even means, and how he didn’t name it himself. 

Then he waits in the van as Renée and Selberg have their smoke break and his fingers twitch on the steering wheel. They’ve pulled into a parking lot and maybe he’ll grab a weird energy drink or something salty to get him to stop craving something he knows deep down he quit years ago. 

What he feels isn’t envy, although he does wish sometimes for the ease that Selberg speaks his native tongue, and Renée’s Polish accent which helps her blend in, or at least belong.

They stand far enough away so that he can’t hear their conversations. It makes him irrationally angry, even though he wouldn’t be able to understand if they were closer. Renée is trying to perfect her Russian with Selberg, at least that’s what she’s been saying for a while now, but Doug sees it as it is: an excuse to get away from him.

Doug looks back up through the window as Renée and Selberg stamp out their respective cigarettes and head back to the van. 

“HERA, start the ignition.”

The new AI that runs the van kicks the engine on. Technically their company was just supposed to take HERA out for a test run, but their company has never given anything back in their life, and Doug’s perfectly content to let whatever legal repercussions there might be run their course. 

Renée gets in the weird middle seat, leaving Selberg to ride shotgun. 

“Who are we picking up next,” Renée asks, even though she knows the answer.

“Someone named Isabel.”

“Right, Lovelace. Another American, yes?”

“Sure,” Doug says, and resents that he doesn’t know anything about the place that he’s supposedly from for about the thousandth time. 

DEUS EX MACHINA

Doug smells asphalt and the salt of his own fear, Renée might be praying, or cursing, he can’t tell. He hates that he’s going to die in Russia. He doesn’t know why he hates it but he does. It’s ironic, maybe. He should know. He should know who is going to miss him. 

The van is still smoking, and one of the doors is opening. Doug sees it in slow-motion. Nothing in his life has happened this slow. Well, nothing he remembers. 

Isabel Lovelace jumps out of the van with a gun of her own, her head still spattered with blood from a bullet wound now healed. None of it makes any sense, but Doug is not complaining, because maybe it means he won’t die. 

And maybe he can figure out why he has a nagging suspicion that he needs to apologize to someone. 

Isabel comes around the side of the van yelling. 

“You, with the gun,” she shouts at Selberg. “Don’t do anything stupid and I won’t shoot you in the fucking head.”

Selberg turns slowly, gun raised. 

“I shot you,” he says, like that should negate the fact that she is standing with them on the side of the road, pointing a gun at his head like some kind of sick deja vu. 

“I noticed,” Isabel spits out, and along with it some more blood. “I would just love to talk to you about that, after you put down your weapon and step away from the hostages.”

Doug resents that he doesn’t have a name in this specific circumstance. Then he thinks maybe he forgot to introduce himself. Or maybe Renée forgot, she does that sometimes. 

Selberg stands steady for what seems like eons, then curses, and makes a show of laying his gun down. 

“Kick it over here,” she says, and he complies. The weapon skids across the asphalt, comes to rest near Isabel’s boots. She picks it up and tucks it into the waistband of her pants. 

Renée is up in a second, and wrestling Selberg’s arms behind him, then marching him to the van. Isabel helps tie his hands with the odds and ends they keep in the back of the van. 

Doug sits on the side of the road and wonders if everyone’s life is like this. 

Probably not, reasonably. 

But everyone in his life seemed to know what to do in every situation. Well, maybe not every situation, but who knows how to restrain a 50-something wiry Russian maniac with two zip ties and a couple hairbands? Renée Minkowski and Isabel Lovelace, apparently. 

“You military?” he hears Isabel ask, as they push Selberg in the back of the van.

Renée gives her a curt nod of affirmation, more than Doug has ever gotten in response to questions about her personal life. 

Doug stares at the ground. He wonders if this will ever matter, if this incident is important or not, if he will ever forget the feeling of being almost dead, close to dead, on the side of the road in Russia. 

He looks up. Renée is waving for him to get up and come with them. He scrambles to his feet.

The world starts to look far away, he can see Renée's waving arms like shadows above her head. Then he’s tipping, falling back to Earth, center of gravity. 

As he falls, he thinks, “Anne, how could I forget Anne.”

A flash after that, and a shout which he’ll later learn is Renée yelling at him for fainting, typical. Then he’s gone. 

INTERIM

He’s lying in the back seat with an aching pain behind his eyes. He blinks, then regrets it, wondering how big of a mess Renée had to get them into for him to be hungover in the back of their van. 

Then he sees that his legs are dangling over the bound-up Selberg, who is looking at him with a look of supreme disinterest. Right. 

“G’morning,” he manages. 

“It is eleven in the evening,” Selberg says in his clipped Russian accent. 

“Huh. Good Afternoon?” 

Selberg rolls his eyes as Doug slowly comes back into consciousness, grimacing as he sits up, and only kicking Selberg in the face a couple times. The man did try to kill him. 

“Jesus, did they leave me in here alone with you?”

Selberg just shrugs as much as he can with his restraints.

“Jesus,” Doug repeats, attempts to open the door and finds it locked. His head hurts. He feels like he’s just blanked on a thought that was at the front of his mind. It’s annoying. Almost as annoying as Renée Minkowski leaving him in a van with a maniac to go hang out with an American zombie she’s suddenly taken a liking to. 

Doug stumbles out of the van and into another parking lot. It is dark, like Selberg had predicted. The industrial street lamps flicker like they do in every city Doug has ever remembered going to. 

He sees Isabel and Renée huddled around a payphone on the other side of the lot. He brings up his hand in a wave through the thick, dark air. 

Renée waves back.

CATCH UP

“What are you saying,” Doug says again. Renée looks frustrated, and a little sad. She gets mad at him when he doesn’t understand her. Doug thinks it’s because she’s making it about her accent. This is not about her accent. 

“Renée,” he says again, very calmly, he thinks, as white noise plays on repeat in his head. “What are you saying to me.”

Selberg is laughing. And laughing. And laughing. 

“Shut up.” That’s Lovelace, who’s still in their van, apparently. 

“Prove it, Jesus, Renée, prove it.” 

“Okay!” Renée says, maybe a bit too angrily, because she resolves herself, takes a deep breath, says, “Sorry Doug. I’m really sorry.” 

And she’s giving him that look, the one that she gets when she’s very drunk and doesn’t think he’s sober enough to notice. 

“Oh, for God’s sake,” says Isabel. “HERA, why don’t you come on out of dark mode.” 

HERA’s dash flickers to light, displaying symbols Doug’s never seen before. “AH,” comes an equally flickering voice out of the radio speakers. “MUCH BETTER. YOU SEE, DOUG, I WAS STOLEN TECH, BUT IF THE PEOPLE WHO MADE ME FOUND YOU, IT WOULDN’T BE LITIGATION, IT WOULD BE DEATH. I’M ONE OF THE MOST SOPHISTICATED AIS OUT THERE.” 

“We’re…” Doug struggles for a bit, “we’re a travel company. We drive tourists around Moscow.” 

Isabel lets out a frustrated sigh. “He’s still in shock, Minkowski, he’s not going to get it.”

Renée just starts shaking her head. Then, while still driving, pulls Isabel’s head closer to hers, and whispers something to her. Doug catches more than he thinks he’s supposed to, words like: “memory,” and “amnesia” and “trauma”. He doesn’t like the sound of any of them. 

“I can hear you, you know,” he says, even though he only heard snatches of the conversation. “I’m just a little bit confused as to how a travel agency is in possession of something that could cause world war three.” By the end, he’s shouting and doesn’t know why. 

“I WOULDN’T SAY THAT,” says HERA, “AND DOUG, THAT’S EASY. IT’S A FRONT. THE TRAVEL COMPANY. IT’S A FRONT.”

“Oh,” Doug says, because, surprisingly, _that_ makes sense. “For, like, the Russian Mafia?”

“No,” Lovelace cuts in, “but not far off.”

“Great,” Renée says, “now he thinks we’re criminals.”

Lovelace quirks an eyebrow. “We’re not?”

“Freedom fighters,” Renée says with conviction, and Lovelace heaves a long-suffering sigh. 

Doug looks at Renée with suspicion, “You know her.” He jerks his head towards Isabel.

The two women look at each other and start talking at the same time.

“Well, I knew _of_ her,” Renée says in a rush. 

As Isabel says, calmly: “We’re in the same resistance group, Doug. I was your liaison.”

“Yes, right, liaison,” Renée says, and coughs. “Until Selberg decided that he was going to do something stupid.”

“Any idea yet why?” Isabel says while looking into the back, where Selberg has quieted and is engaging in truly historic amounts of contemptuous silence. Renée just shakes her head and says “rat” under her breath.

Doug’s brain is doing the thing that it’s been doing to the point of splitting headache for the past 24 hours, in which he feels like he’s barely holding his head above water and grasping for phrases, and latches onto one of the snippets of conversation he’s managed to understand. 

“Wait, freedom fighters? Resistance...what the fuck, this isn’t the cold war anymore.”

Silence.

“I mean, it’s not the cold war anymore, right? I...it can’t be the cold war?”

Renée rescues him with a hand on his arm. “We’re not in the cold war anymore, Doug.” 

“Okay. So, something else.” 

“Corporate malpractice,” Isabel says. “The rest is on a need-to-know basis.”

Renée and Isabel seem to have another staring contest, the subject of which is Doug Eiffel and ‘what he needs to know’. Isabel wins. 

“If I may,” Selberg says.

“You may not,” says Isabel. “Why haven’t we gagged you yet?” 

Doug takes the initiative to stuff a punch of old newspaper on the bottom of the van into Selberg’s mouth. 

“Thanks,” Isabel says. 

“You can’t tell me anything else?”

Isabel narrows her eyes at him. 

“Later, Doug,” Renée says. “At the motel.” 

None of them are coherent enough to talk when they reach the place they’re staying. They secure Selberg to a bed frame with hastily purchased hardware store handcuffs, and slump, fully clothed, onto a bed, couch, and chair respectively. 

GLORIA

Doug is sitting in the passenger seat of Renée’s car, and he’s made her laugh, which always gives him a feeling of accomplishment. 

It feels familiar. Of course it’s familiar, it’s his job. He looks into the backseat to check that their equipment is there and sees Selberg cleaning one of many guns in silence. 

And that’s not right: isn’t Selberg tied up in the back, and wasn’t it a van, and what could they possibly need that many guns for? 

Doug looks out the window to find desert, the McDonald’s arches shimmering in the distance, and English signage. 

Renée is saying: “Eiffel are you even listening to me? Cutter said this might be a big break for us, I need you to pay attention.”

He hears himself say: “Yes, Minkowski, I’m very sure that the big man, who has never in his very long career given anyone a big break, will give it to us, and not SI-5.”

“OH, BE POSITIVE, EIFFEL,” says HERA.

There’s a long and tense silence, the road stretches on. Doug is acutely aware of how they are hurtling towards what may or may not be the end of his life. 

Renée says, finally: “He put us both on this mission, didn’t he.”

Doug nods, checks in his pockets for a cigarette, then remembers that he quit. 

“Ten more miles,” Renée says, with a hint of apprehension in her voice. “We know our game plan, boys?” 

Selberg tosses a gun to Doug from the backseat. Doug grins, and it feels foreign on his face, a gritty and half-manic smile, the smile of a man with nothing else to lose. “We always do.”


End file.
